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Lance Armstrong naked, exposed as the author of his own scam (with video)

Lance Armstrong is named the master of his own scam. The United States Anti-Doping Agency released details of its 1,000-plus pages of damning evidence, "sworn testimony from 26 people, including 15 riders with knowledge of the US Postal Service Team (USPS Team) and its participants' doping activities." The evidence includes direct documentary evidence that prove the use, possession and distribution of performance enhancing drugs by Lance Armstrong.

VANCOUVER — When Hans Christian Andersen wrote The Emperor’s New Clothes in 1837, he never could have envisioned that one day there would be a Lance Armstrong, let alone his army of LiveStrong true believers.

But he understood the phenomenon well enough.

He understood a scam, and the lengths to which those taken in by one would go, once fooled, in order to perpetuate the lie.

The difference, of course, is that the vain emperor of Andersen’s tale was, before anyone around him, the scam’s first victim, given non-existent finery to wear, told that only the stupid or unworthy would be unable to see it and reluctant to admit that he couldn’t, either.

Armstrong, it now seems undeniable, was the author of his scam. He made his own invisible clothes. In the fairy tale he constructed and fought like a demon to protect, only the stupid and unworthy would believe the doping allegations against him, would believe that he won all those Tour de France titles while cheating.

The media, the anti-doping agencies, the jealous teammates, the laboratories: they were the liars, and he was the truth. He destroyed those who got in his way, bullied, intimidated, bluffed his way past every new wave of circumstantial evidence as the net closed around him.

And the townsfolk, the loyal citizens of his empire, the Live Strong crowd who first didn’t believe and later didn’t care that the foundation of his fundraising for cancer was built upon a monstrous and persistent lie, clung to his fiction and pooh-poohed anyone and anything that threatened it.

But today, Lance Armstrong is every bit as naked as the foolish emperor.

Wednesday the United States Anti-Doping Agency released details of its 1,000-plus pages of damning evidence, “sworn testimony from 26 people, including 15 riders with knowledge of the US Postal Service Team (USPS Team) and its participants’ doping activities,” according to a statement by CEO Travis Tygart on USADA’s website.

“The evidence also includes direct documentary evidence including financial payments, emails, scientific data and laboratory test results that further prove the use, possession and distribution of performance enhancing drugs by Lance Armstrong and confirm the disappointing truth about the deceptive activities of the USPS Team, a team that received tens of millions of American taxpayer dollars in funding.”

It listed the 15 riders (including Toronto’s Michael Barry) who admitted to doping and gave testimony under oath. Armstrong has accused many of them of jealousy, of opportunism, of coercion, of all kinds of motives in refuting their statements — but never before has one of the witnesses been his close friend through all the years of deceit, George Hincapie, whose testimony is finally the one Armstrong will find it impossible to discredit.

“About two years ago, I was approached by US Federal investigators, and more recently by USADA, and asked to tell of my personal experience in these matters,” Hincapie said, in a statement on his own website that admitted using performance-enhancing drugs. “I would have been much more comfortable talking only about myself, but understood that I was obligated to tell the truth about everything I knew. So that is what I did.”

The USADA statement called the USPS Team’s actions and coverup “the most sophisticated, professionalized and successful doping program that sport has ever seen,” and a “conspiracy professionally designed to groom and pressure athletes to use dangerous drugs, to evade detection, to ensure its secrecy and ultimately gain an unfair competitive advantage through superior doping practices. A program organized by individuals who thought they were above the rules and who still play a major and active role in sport today.”

Reaction from around the amateur sports world, among those who have covered international cycling, was unsparing, but then, surely Armstrong could have expected nothing less after all the years he spent pushing his doubters around.

David Walsh (@DavidWalshST), the plucky Irishman and superb Sunday Times writer who helped pull back the veil on Armstrong years ago, was threatened with a lawsuit (subsequently withdrawn) and who has written two books about the pursuit of the truth, L.A. Confidentiel and L.A. Officiel, tweeted: “Report up on USADA website. Read it and rejoice that for at least one moment in our lives, the culture of Omerta in cycling has been broken.” And: “In the war on doping, this is a seminal moment. An untouchable is about to be exposed, one who believed he was protected by his own sport.”

Christopher Clarey (@christophclarey) of the International Herald Tribune: “A lot of false dawns in the antidoping movement but this USADA statement looks like real sunlight. Must read.”

The USADA said it was forwarding all of its findings to the international cycling federation (UCI), which had to be dragged, kicking and screaming, into the anti-doping war — so it’s no sure bet that it will act swiftly on the Armstrong file.

And then there is the public, the ever-rationalizing devotees. Some will refuse to believe it, even now, or they will say they don’t care if it was all a lie, because the fundraising, the hundreds of millions that cancer survivor Lance Armstrong raised for research and awareness — that was no lie. Point taken.

But as Clarey writes: “For those who point to Lance Armstrong's cancer work: Do you deserve to be a symbol if you owe your bully pulpit to cheating?”

Maybe those who have been helped by Armstrong’s campaigns, who have worn his bracelets and been buoyed by his triumph over the disease and found inspiration in it for their own battles, have the right to believe what they want.

And maybe Jerry Sandusky really was just “horsing around” and didn’t really molest those kids at Penn State, and Joe Paterno didn’t really help cover up for his former defensive coordinator.

After all, Old Joe was a big benefactor to charitable causes, and to the university. And when it comes right down to it, they won a helluva lot of football games.

The U.S. Anti-Doping Agency says 11 of Lance Armstrong’s former teammates testified against him in its investigation of the cyclist, revealing “the most sophisticated, professionalized and successful doping program that sport has ever seen.”

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